In the future, young men will be forced to play all video games as Fat Lara Croft.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Of all the loopy manifestos that this whole #GamerGate fiasco has inspired, I think this loopy manifesto, posted several days ago to the Men’s Rights subreddit to a smattering of upvotes, is probably my favorite.
Take it away, trudatness:
Think about what really went down in gaming journalism – not on the micro level, but on the macro level.
The most left-wing journalism companies happily filled the gaming journalism void. Think about it…
The most virulent lavender menace feminist laced industry on the planet began covering an industry whose target audience was comprised of somewhat socially awkward young men.
Hey what could go wrong?
Answer: Everything.
Woah, hate to be a stickler for stuff that actually makes sense, but if you’re going to use a homophobic slur to describe your opponents, make sure you pick the correct homophobic slur. The phrase “lavender menace” originated as an insult aimed at lesbians in the feminist movement; the term was later reclaimed by lesbian feminists. Whether as as a slur or as an honorific, I’m pretty sure the term is not a terribly apt description of the dude-dominated world of video game journalism, as dudes cannot actually be lesbians.
The video game online journalism industry hates gamers. They made no bones about that fact when they coordinated a drop of nearly a dozen articles eulogizing the gamer.
Er, a eulogy is “a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially a set oration in honor of a deceased person.” I think what you meant to say is that there were a bunch of articles proclaiming the death of the traditional self-described “gamer.” Most of these articles were not full of hate for games, or for people who play games, but only for self-proclaimed “gamers” who want gaming to be a preserve of adolescent (and overgrown adolescent) dudes.
If you hate gamers, then why cover gaming?
Answer: There’s only so much money you can make covering gay pride parades.
Not true. It’s a little known historical fact that John D. Rockefeller Sr. made his fortune covering gay pride parades.
Wait, I am being told that John D. Rockefeller Sr. actually made his fortune by founding Standard Oil, and that there weren’t actually any gay pride parades anywhere until decades after he died.
I need to stop getting all my information from IncorrectGayOPedia.
So these twisted totalitarianists decided they were going to take an industry – a humble hobbyist collective that had grown into a billion dollar industry – and simply evict the current tenants with bullying, shaming and sexual coercion. They were going to move in, via takeover, bringing all their talentless cronies in with them.
THE LAVENDER TOTALITARIANISTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR GAMES!!
What better way to deal with the gamers you hate, by shaming them into subservience? These 3rd wavers wanted to co-opt gaming and turn it into their vehicle of propaganda, dictating to designers what is to be produced.
Apparently mentioning that many games contain sexist elements is the same as ordering designers to replace Call of Duty: Black Ops with Call of Duty: Kill All Men.
Who the fuck do these people think they are? They truly intended to force gaming hobbyists into kowtowing and accepting their dogmas.
This is what feminism does.
It’s true. Feminism has always been about fucking with hobbyists. Who can forget Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Force Dudes to Play Sissy Facebook Games Like,You Know, Farmville or Some Shit?
Egalitarianism? Hardly? More like Machiavellianism. They want to control the masses and superimpose their value system onto people by force.
That’s right: Anita Sarkeesian has actually been using her Kickstarter money to fund the training of an elite core of feminist commandos who will soon be dispatched to mother’s basements across the nation to pry copies of Grand Theft Auto V from the hands of true gaming heroes.
They cannot let the truth of their message speak for itself.
Hard to do when all you do is front out lies. …
Look at the so-called game reviews… They aren’t game reviews. They are social justice critiques. Does the game get the feminist lavender menace seal of SJW approval?
I would actually love to see a Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval. Could someone draw me one?
Tsk, tsk, tsk… Those women have too big of boobs… Not enough “realistic woman” protagonists… That’s Sexist!
Pretty soon all games are going to require that all game characters are lesbian or trans-gendered and run around fighting the patriarchy or some dumb shit like that.
Yep. Soon all red-blooded young men will be forced to play all games as Lesbian Lara Croft.
Do you want to kill some zombies or get lost in an RPG fantasy? Play a little PvP? I hope you like tumblr-style fat-acceptance friendly avatars.
Make that FAT Lesbian Lara Croft.
This is the twisted fucking world they live in – and they want to make every single gamer out there accept their worldview.
It’s time for the tail to stop wagging the dog.
It’s time to full on evict SJWs from the gaming world.
Not if we sit on you first.
EDIT: Ok, ok, I fixed the terrible typo in the headline. But speaking of LAVENDER menaces, Leocigale has provided us with this wonderful Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval, which will now go in the sidebar. (There were several other excel
lent Seals of Approval submitted, but this one has an actual adorable seal it it!)
Arf arf!
katz: thank you, for your beautiful link-gift! Now, I can resume my work with triple efficiency. Such source of soundtrack!
katz,
I am not a gamer, but I totally play that game.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244972/So-thats-babies-come-Couple-think-imaginative-theory-children-brought-world.html
:p
Ha! Gamers they call themselves! Pinball, Pachinko, Pong! So there!
Would you like some ointment for that diaper rash, Mac?
I’ll concede a point or two here. Nobody here is stopping #GamerGate, as the perpetrators of that hash are doing a fine job of that themselves. They’ve shot themselves in both feet. It’s a wonder they have anything left to stamp with, as you are doing. Perhaps next you’d like to aim for your own ass?
And yeah, “corruption in game journalism”. It has always existed! Yet somehow, that was just never a problem with you social-injustice lunks until some uppity woman game developer dumped her shitty boyfriend and started dating a Kotaku journalist. Who never even gave her the quid for her quo. Doesn’t seem fair, really…unless she actually preferred him to her shitty ex, who has apparently justified her dumping him by writing a ten-thousand-word spew and started a troll war against her. Gee, I can’t imagine why she ever left him for that other guy!
And yes, the games industry IS changing for the better…with every new woman who comes in to fight you asshats tooth and nail, and wins by creating better games instead of just more dull variations on Rape-a-Hooker Shoot-’em-Ups.
Guess you’ll be needing some tissues next. Diddums!
She had that potential from the very beginning but it was squandered. Originally she was going to be Lara Cruz, a South American explorer, but they made her white and English to make her more relatable to the majority audience. Her big boobs were an accident. A designer accidentally enlarged her pixel boobs by 150%, not 50%. The other designers liked it so much they kept it.
Her creator, Toby Guard, was so disappointed he left Core Design. I can see why. His intention was to create Lara to counter stereotypical portrayals of female characters. The sad irony is that in the end Lara became a stereotypical female character, or at least was whitewashed so her potency her mitigated.
Thankfully the Tomb Raider reboot seems to be taking the franchise to a better place.
Don’t forget the part of his post wherein he admitted that the reason that they actually broke up for the final time was because she wouldn’t let him comb through her email and Facebook history without deleting some stuff first. Then he writes a 10,000 word screed shitting on her and the three guys that she allegedly slept with (though, I’d like to point out, she only had sex with Nathan Grayson while she and Eron were broken up temporarily) because she won’t give him unlimited access to her personal files.
Also, that Fat Lara looks more like a morbidly obese dude. Maybe some “socially awkward” gamer’s self-portrait?
And yeah, that jug…probably high-efficiency detergent or fabric softener. Which she would need, judging by the awkward way she’s holding that pizza.
How refreshing. A fedora wearing drool bucket who comes right out and says what they’re all afraid of: “outsiders” invading “their” hobby. Pushing women out of the hobby and the industry is the goal.
What do you bet the stuff she deleted was complaints/commiseration at what a jackass she was with? In any case, it was none of his damn business, and he had no right to demand access to it.
You know, just out of curiosity, I randomly pulled up what games I have played in the past year or so, and what gender the protagonists were:
Loved: you’re a little black animal. (A pet?) You get to choose your gender. The game will then misgender you the entire time to prove a point.
Alice: Madness Returns: you’re a mentally ill woman in her late teens who isn’t sexualized. You try to overcome your own mental illness long enough to figure out what’s going on, before your mind and the minds of others are destroyed. It’s all about repressed memories and survivor guilt.
Myst: it’s fucking Myst. You could be a fucking hamster in a ball for all the game cares.
Riven: ditto.
Grim Fandango: you’re a skeezy death insurance salesman. You are also a skeleton. You break everything and try to fix it and stop being such a dick along the way.
Laura Bow: the Dagger of Amon Ra: you’re a hip 1920s reporter from New Orleans who’s just moved to the Big Apple. And now everyone around you is dying! You try to find out who stole the dagger of Amon Ra and preferably not die a bajillion times.
Zork: Nemesis: like Myst, your player character is left completely blank. You get hit on by a dead guy at one point, but that’s it. You’re trying to find some missing people and get sucked into a time-loop, trying to solve the problems that led to it. It’s like Myst with a sense of humor.
Curse of Monkey Island: you’re Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate. (Well, sort of.) You accidentally turn her into a statue of solid gold because you’re Guybrush Threepwood. You try and uncurse her and also get her back from the ghost demon zombie pirate LeChuck so he stops creeping on her.
Dragon Age: Origins: Sneak played this one, and decided to play a black female dwarf. You kill stuff. A LOT of stuff. We didn’t make it very far.
In summary: three women, two men, four vague. I am totally okay with this.
RE: katz
Congratulations. You have just found Sneak: the Game.
[THIS COMMENT CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE BIOSHOCK GAMES, ESPECIALLY BIOSHOCK INFINITE.]
To be fair to Bioshock Infinite: the protagonist of that game is not a good person. In fact, while I hesitate to call Booker a bad person, I don’t think he could find “good” with a map.
There’s some interesting commentary going on with Infinite about the nature of shooter games. Just about any game Ken Levine writes has some level of subtextual commentary going on.
The first Bioshock game, with its themes of mind control, is considered a commentary on user choice by People Who Think Too Much About Video Games. The argument is that, just like the protagonist of Bioshock is being controlled by his “friend” Atlas into committing atrocities, players are manipulated by the constraints of the game to do what it wants you to do. You have no real choice in the matter, just like Jack has no choice in doing what Atlas tells him to do. The only way you can make a choice for yourself is to stop playing. (I’m summing this up really badly; there are articles on the subject, but they’re a bit hard to find.)
Because of this strain of subtext in Bioshock, I always thought Bioshock Infinite was commentary, to some level, on what sort of person would “realistically” become the hero of a first person shooter. The answer isn’t pretty. Booker committed a massacre that killed his own people, he worked as a Pinkerton and busted up labor unions, and he sold his own daughter because he couldn’t pay his gambling debts. With a bit of a nudge in the wrong direction, parallel-universe Booker easily becomes a xenophobic, racist, fanatical creep.
The text and the subtext both condemn Booker for these actions. Furthermore, the actions of the old guy who served with Booker in the army, and the way things play out in the Vox Populi universe where Booker’s seen as a hero, pretty clearly cement this reading in my mind. Levine’s trying to say that the sort of person who becomes a war “hero” is, at best, deeply flawed, and not a hero in any sense of the word.
Because most gamers are a little desensitized to violence- especially the violence in a first-person shooter game- in order to get this point across, the game is over-the-top gruesome. There’s a reason your main melee weapon is a skyhook- a spinning disc that basically acts like a chainsaw to the faces of your opponents. There’s a reason why Elizabeth freaks out and reacts to everything Booker does the way that she does. On some level, it’s designed to make you think about the violence you’re causing.
(Note: I’m not trying to say that Bioshock is perfect. There’s some pretty ugly unexamined racism in there, and ditto with unexamined sexism. But it’s my favorite game franchise of all time, and I feel like this is one of the things it got right.)
More Bioshock Infinite spoilers:
Well sure, Booker’s not a great guy. But, I don’t feel like the game is condemning Booker for murdering his way through the city when you’re actually playing the game. This particular massacre is Booker trying to redeem himself. And Elizabeth is helping him do it, as well.
More Bioshock Infinite Spoilers:
Heh, it’s definitely a Your Mileage May Vary kind of thing, I guess. I definitely felt like there were references to the idea of war and killing people being a terrible idea? Like how Elizabeth references Les Mis in relation to the Vox Populi before everything goes to heck, say.
I do think that all the Bioshock games have a fair share of ludonarrative dissonance. Basically, what you’re being asked to do in the game and what the story is trying to get you to think about are at cross-purposes with each other. The storyline may not have kind things to say about war; the gameplay demands nothing but. (Personally, I think that means that Bioshock Infinite, at least, was being told in the wrong genre? but that’s just me.)
I would honestly play the heck out of a Bioshock-flavored game where the gameplay was a little more like, say, Myst or Gone Home. No fighting, lots of puzzles… Sounds like my vision of heaven, honestly.
Anyway, long time-lurker, first-time poster (probably), and I’m sorry for only being summoned by Bioshock games.
Was that really necessary, Bina?
Thanks for the seals! I added leocigale’s to the post, and will put it in the sidebar.
Oh, and sorry about the blatant typo in the headline, which I have now fixed. Ooops.
Ooh, I didn’t know that bit…Yeah, Eron really is a controlling little bastid, isn’t he?
If someone I was with demanded access to my emails, I’d hit the road….If you don’t trust me, you either work on that or I need to walk.
As for the industry? Women dollars (pounds, euros) spend the same as men dollars. Games that cater to women’s sensibilities are likely to make more money, because women are slightly more than half the market.
…Some of us non-male humans (yes, we are human) have played video games all along, kids…
This is random but I saw these and I thought they was funny
http://ask-an-mra-anything.tumblr.com
http://youtu.be/i1SFm62Etyc
http://youtu.be/la6vK6hI7rM
@LBT, you been rifling through my gaming library? Haven’t played Alice though, that sounds interesting. I loved Zork Nemesis and Myst but Riven induced ragequit in me. Playing Tomb Raider reboot at mo and enjoying it, have Civ on the go on the pc, and The Last of Us lined up for later.
@sciencefair200
In System Shock 2 (semi-related to the bioshock series), you could avoid a lot of combat entirely if you wanted
it was a good idea in general because nearly all the projectile weapons would degrade from use, and ammo and the repair items were scarce.
and of course SHODAN makes GlaDos look like a kitten
You know, take away the new-fangled technology like the internet and this gamergate nonsense isn’t even original.
Back in the late 70s as the tabletop roleplayers started coming to conventions and games stores, there were plenty of war gamer guys (and yeah, IME it was nearly entirely guys) who were Not Happy.
See, they were the Real Gamers, with their Napoleonics and their squads of figures to move about in battle formations on terrain/modeled tables. “Magic? Dragons? ELVES?!?? Get out of OUR hobby.”
And the tabletop RPGers, with their dice and their maps and their character sheets replied “Oh hell no. We are gamers too, Because we play games and that’s what gamers do.”
I do have to say that to my knowledge the war gamers never showed their collective asses like this. So, *slow clap* for the gamergate clowns for being all-around more awful.
In my circles, at least, there were always girls and women playing and running and writing and illustrating games. We painted little lead figurines we modded to more closely match our characters. We went to SF cons, we costumed, we made art and music. Some of us wrote stories. We ran demo games to introduce new game systems.
We branched out (or back) into fandom. We argued Trek VS Star Wars. We set all day viewing parties around Doctor Who re-runs. We collected comics. We went to cons, we volunteered at cons. And along the way some of us learned about computers and game design- or taught our kids.
I would bet good money that most of gamergate is being driven by guys who are young enough to be my children or grandchildren. Video games are not my thing- but I still have my very fancy dice and my graph paper and I could whip together a scenario and run a game on about 24 hours notice.
The ‘gamer’ identity doesn’t belong exclusively to the gamergate jerks. The internet doesn’t belong to them either. They know that on some level and it terrifies them.
(Sorry, I think I just had a Get Off My Imaginary Lawn moment. I didn’t realize how very very tired I am of willfully ignorant man-children I’ve become. I’m going to go amuse myself figuring out how to steampunk costume as the Lavender Menace. I’m thinking of a neo-Victorian Deportment Mistress, fighting crime and bad manners for great justice.)
That made me think of Susan Sto-Helit for some reason…and I wondered if anyone had depicted her in purple? Yes they have!
My first college I.D. had a picture of a seal on it. Also one of those embossed sort of thingies that I believe was put on with a squeezy thing (all right, I’m not being very technical tonight). Also a line on the bottom saying “NOT VALID WITHOUT SEAL”.
I actually had people fail to believe that this was a valid college I.D. Note to administrators: Bad puns on the I.D. do not add to your credibility.
I wish I’d taken a picture of the thing before it fell into an open container of Bag Balm and turned greasy yellow.
Susan Sto-Helit? Might I say that you have excellent taste in books? 😀
Susan STo-Helie is another pictures for my Simws.
St;eio;; can’te type.
THnaks!
I’ve been gaming for 20+ years (back when you could hire a Sega Master System from the local video store! Pac-Mania and Sonic represent!). I wouldn’t consider myself “hardcore”, but I’d certainly say I’m more than just a “casual” gamer – games have been a big part of my life.
Anybody who claims I’m part of their “legions” of gamers crusading against corrupt games journalism, but only in this instance, can
FUCK
RIGHT OFF
INTO THE SUN
I grew up on Sega, have played Tomb Raider (the original and the reboot, thankyouverymuch), own over half a dozen gaming machines and am getting really pissed off with these bastards trying to claim they represent the average gamer. I personally love having games that buck the stereotypes of helpless damsels and muscly uber-macho guys (almost always white guys, naturally). It’s a peculiarly specific age band associated with this “games are boy things and girls should leave them alone!” mindset, I think.
I despise the idea of games getting soft-pedalled because of corrupt journalists, because it means the games companies don’t have any incentive to make better games – not because it gives me good cover to assassinate the character of a particular woman I dislike.
@katz
That video reminds me of Robot Unicorn Attack.
Hell, I’ve been playing video games since I was a pre-teen with an Atari 2600. I kind of yearn for the days of 8-bit graphics because it was a lot harder to sexualize the characters than it is nowadays when you have gross brogrammers and their boob jiggle physics.
I play a lot of the AAA games, but in recent years, I’ve really got into Indie and other smaller name games.
Currently, I’m obsessed with The Cat Lady http://thecatlady.co.uk/
I especially appreciate the way they portray suicidally deep depression and themes of acceptance and redemption. Plus, the soundtrack is wonderful. I got turned on to Tears of Mars because of this game.
Five Nights at Freddie’s is freaking me out and frustrating the hell out of me. Has anyone here cracked it yet?! If so, HINTS!
The Novelist is a story heavy game. It can get a little tedious but if you can stick with it, it’s pretty good.
The Stanley Parable is trippy and a little confusing, but the narration kind of reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with all the dry, British wit.
And you’ve seen me talk about Goat Simulator. I love that thing!
Oh and of course Dear Esther and Gone Home.
I’m rather glad that shitty gamebros don’t consider these games as worthy of their attention. It would kind of ruin them if they did.
I actually REALLY annoyed a gamebro by saying Five nights at freddies has barely any more gameplay than Depression Quest
@LBT
High five!!! I’m fresh off of a Lucas Arts nostalgia trip myself. I really wish we could get some more games of the Monkey Island/Grim Fandango ilk and humour
@theladyzombie
Don’t obsess over the cameras. In the first two nights, you don’t need to use them at all, just the lights. Keep checking them, close the door when Bonnie or Chica show up and you’ll be fine. In the third and fourth nights, you need to use the cameras only to keep an eye on Foxy, because he’ll make a run for the door if you don’t. It’s only in the fifth night that you need to use the cameras, to keep track of Freddy. Don’t lose him, or he can get inside your room even with both doors down.
Is there any particular reason our seal is a fur seal instead of a true seal? It’s absolutely adorable, regardless!
Oh my gawd my seal’s on the page! I am honoured this is so awesome!! 😀
I can’t play any games on the computer because I haven’t downloaded adobe yet and I have other problems too, which really stinks.
I played demos on my brother’s playstation 3 like Fear, Devil may cry, wolverine, overlord and another one that I can’t quite remember. It had two main protagonists, one of them is a woman who tries to find her mom and another is a man who is a journalist. They go to a world with strange monsters called ID I think? I don’t know.
I’v heard of games like cry of fear, it’s a horror game that has a man who deals with depression and anxiety and finds himself in danger with monsters after him.
I think it would be pretty cool if we made our own games.
Because it’s a Furrinati seal, natch.
Ah, very true.
Furrinati seal is all the win. And all the lavender. No lavender seals for Dudebros: lavender seals are too cool for that. 🙂
Night, all!
“twisted totalitarianists” New band name – called it.
I’ve been hooked on this mobile game called Clash of Lords II. It’s a strategy game where you build your base, fight other players, train your heroes, etc. At any rate, I run the top guild in my server. One thing that strikes me is how many girls and women are playing this game. The gender split is at least 50/50. And the other thing that strikes me is how easy it has been to find a good group of people. I haven’t had any of the problems I’ve had on MMOs. People who are racist, sexist, etc are easily booted from the group — many times they are chased out by my guildies before I can even get back online to kick them. And the teen girls in my group talk about how they play Call of Duty and all the other games that the “real gamer doods” claim belong to them.
At any rate, among the gaming masses, things have changed. I think that’s why these guys are so very hateful, and sadly, so very dangerous as they target harassment against anyone who they see as emblematic of those changes.
That seal is probably one of the best things I’ve seen.
Also… really, just what? Do these kind of people just get a “generate words from the dictionary” randomizers, press the button a few times, throw together the results, and use that? I swear half of the terms or things I see just seem like utter gibberish.
I love the seal, but you’ve got SWJ on it instead of SJW.
I’ve never encountered the term until now, but thank you for introducing me to “virulent lavender menace”.
Kim, yeah, I should ask Leocigale to fix that.
Since there’s been some discussion of Lara Croft as a character and the nature of the reboot I’m curious about opinions.
I played the reboot, it was the first Tomb Raider game I’ve played since the second one, and it made me really uncomfortable. There was something about the way Croft was gleefully subjected to incredibly brutal violence that really bothered me. I suppose that could be kind of the point, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with a male protagonist who was abused the way Croft was in the reboot. The pseudo-sexual assault just kidding it’s actually a murder by strangulation scene was disturbing to me as well. I’m not sure how I feel about the game as a whole, (I did beat it, which is rare for me), but the whole experience left me feeling uncomfortable.
I really wish there was a version of Bioshock Infinite that cut all of the combat. My favorite parts of the game were the wandering around exploring the city segments, and I would totally have played a Gone home-style Bioshock. The violence was too over the top for me, especially given how it seemed to contrast with the narrative.
I played the reboot, it was the first Tomb Raider game I’ve played since the second one, and it made me really uncomfortable.
I was actually kind of uncomfortable with the Laura Croft reboot too, but I only just got to the first campsite. I was told it gets a lot better, and it certainly does get a lot less “quicktime event”-y.
I really wish there was a version of Bioshock Infinite that cut all of the combat. My favorite parts of the game were the wandering around exploring the city segments, and I would totally have played a Gone home-style Bioshock. The violence was too over the top for me, especially given how it seemed to contrast with the narrative.
I KNOW, RIGHT.
I love the Bioshock/Infinite universe but I absolutely hate, hate, hate first-person shooters. I would give my left leg to play a Bioshock where the gameplay was somewhere in between Gone Home and Mirror’s Edge. (Mirror’s Edge being that parkour game). I would probably ragequit at every single exciting running bit, but it would be So Cool.
…hello blockquote monster, nice to see you again.
Also, shut up, Woody.
I know I’m probably being stupid for asking, but can someone explain the “Shut Up Woody” thing to me? I’ve been seeing that in some threads and I’m not entirely certain… who you’re talking to.
There was a troll named Woody around and, well, people told him to Shut Up in almost every thread. And when he got himself on moderation/mod challenge* the “Shut Up Woody!” remained. (Actually he was still posting some weeks ago, despite being on moderation so only boring the poor mods.)
* he will be allowed to post again when he successfully does the challenge to prove that he actually reads the threads he posts in.
ACK! Here’s a fixed version:
http://imgur.com/0wg8zBQ
@Malitia
Oooh, I see. What’s the challenge?
@leocigale
I love that goddamn seal so much.